Director: Ethan Hawke
Cast: Maya Hawke, Rafael Casal, Philip Ettinger, Cooper Hoffman
Have I Seen It Before: Funny story, that. I keep teetering on the edge of writing it all down here but let’s leave it at this: If you see me out in the world, ask me about the time Ethan Hawke specifically and directly wasted 105 minutes of my time.
But no, I’ve never seen the film before today.
Did I Like It: Any kind of artists probably spends a large part of their existence hoping that no one will see the seams in their work. That’s infinitely complicated by the fact that those seams are likely the only thing the artist can see anymore.
I think Ethan Hawke would admit, if pressed, that he didn’t on the page have much of a movie here. That’s not fair. Every moment in the movie is telling me that; we didn’t have to press him at all. There is no narrative in the life of O’Connor (Hawke), and the rest of the movie is filled in with imaginative vignettes depicting O’Connor’s work with the cast re-packaged as the characters.
There are moments, though to really recommend it. I viscerally feel one of the opening scenes where O’Connor bristles at her disinterested editor contorting himself to similarly warp Wise Blood into a more conventional package by outlining the thing before it is done. Several other moments rang true, which is impressive enough when I often have trouble relating to the—one doesn’t want to say “excessively” but the gentler correct word escapes me—religious. Several of the vignettes of O’Connor’s world are evocative and would make astonishingly good short subjects, but they aren’t. Admittedly, the film accomplishes that goal that I often look for in biopics like this: It made me want to seek out the author’s work. Unfortunately, here, it is only because I feel like I got short shrift in the process.
It is all as if the elder Hawke might have really wanted to make a documentary about O’Connor with those fictional interludes spliced throughout, and just… didn’t. An admirable disappointment, but still a disappointment.